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NU validator screams “Error: Legacy doctype” even if the DOCTYPE is a ”obsolete permitted DOCTYPE". The HTML specification is clear on the fact that there should only be WARNING messages - and not ERROR messages - for obsolete permitted DOCTYPEs: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/obsolete.html#warnings-for-obsolete-but-conforming-features To stamp an obsolete permitted DOCTYPE as error is the opposite of ”To help authors transition from HTML4 and XHTML”, which is the spec’s motivation for allowing these doctypes. (Duplicate bug: http://bugzilla.validator.nu/show_bug.cgi?id=980)
Fixed already. https://bitbucket.org/validator/validator/commits/7625938e679a27265ae625e57b5ed33c063dfacb http://hg.mozilla.org/projects/htmlparser/rev/2a1a57b4c8ff
Thanks. Big (and fast(!) improvement. However, the new message goes like this: “Warning: Obsolete doctype. Expected <!DOCTYPE html>.“ But for the XHTML1 Transitional doctype, one gets this, much more informative message: “Error: Almost standards mode doctype. Expected <!DOCTYPE html>” Also, it seems useful to borrow spec’s exact wording - "obsolete permitted doctype". Therefore, please consider something like this: ”Warning: No-quirks mode, obsolete permitted DOCTYPE. Expected <!DOCTYPE html>” Justification: A message that just says ”obsolete doctype”, without using the word ”error”, is a bit confusing. Also, “obsolete doctype” is very uneducating - it is better to indicate *why* “obsolete” only leads to a warning, namely, because the DOCTYPE triggers no-quirks mode and because it is on the list of "obsolete permitted doctypes".
Now tracking the language of the warning message in bug 23753.